Ravaged
by 0YinANDYang0
Summary: The flock has failed. The world has fallen. The apocalypse has begun. What happens now? Takes place after STWAOES. Post-apocalypse. Fax. Slightly OOC. Rated M for language, citrus, violence, gore, etc.


**Ch.1.0. – My Apocalypse.**

_Never fall asleep_  
><em>You won't wake up<em>  
><em>Destroy the guillotine<em>  
><em>Before he does<em>

_I walk with shadows_  
><em>(you have to find a better way)<em>  
><em>I walk with shadows<em>  
><em>(the questions I will never say)<em>  
><em>Hiding from the gallows<em>  
><em>(they keep me safe and sound)<em>  
><em>So I walk with shadows<em>  
><em>(the ways of burning down this house).<em>

**Max**

White flakes flutter to the ground, touching the barren ground with feather-light whispers. They seem most attracted to the circular tracks scorched into the earth, the cottony substance contrasting embarrassingly against the dark marks.

A girl crouches against the slight breeze that stirs the broken rubble around her. No tears escape her eyes as she lowers her head to avoid the sight. She trembles, but the tremors are from anything but the temperature. With one shaking hand, she tucks a strand of escaped golden hair behind a filthy ear. She glances up quickly as the wind shifts direction, her eyes suddenly fearful and curious at the same time. And then the brown loses its glimmer and becomes dead as mud once again, the light of the soul behind the eyes long since extinguished.

The girl returns her gaze to the ground, ignoring the grimy ruins towering above her on all sides. She knows her fight is over. She has lost the battle; the war has just been won by the wrong side. Her fingers move of their own accord to reach out and pluck some of the falling ash out of the air. She holds the fluff between her fingers and contemplates it. Everything she worked to achieve, everything she ever loved, everything she ever cared for…

Gone.

The ash crumples in the girl's fist.

"Oh, God," she whispers, her voice only a passing murmur in the breeze. The agony, though, is evident enough to quiet the silent world around her. "Why?"

**Fang**

There is only darkness. The entire world has been covered by a cloak, a veil. The stars have disappeared, disguised by a cloud of invisible ash. The boy squatting in the dirt knows this. But still he looks up, hoping against hope to see a pinprick of light, one he knows will lead him home.

In his hand, the boy gingerly clasps a piece of grass, still green, or so he expects. He is aware that he would be unable to make out his own fingers were he to dangle them an inch in front of his face. But still he waits, hoping against hope for his eyes to adjust to the ever-increasing darkness swallowing the world he once knew.

He knows he is waiting. He knows what he is waiting for will never come. He still feels the taste on his lips as he runs his tongue over them for the umpteenth time. He still feels the warmth pressed against his skin, though it is no longer there. And he craves for these feelings to become real once more.

But it will never be.

Silently, an invisible tanned hand loses its hold on the last living thing on Earth, and it falls to the ground with no noise to ever suggest its existence.

The boy closes his eyes.

**Iggy**

There are no whispers. There are no footsteps. There are no taps, no echoes, no scratches. There is just absolute nothingness. The boy wonders if he has gone deaf to join his permanent blindness. Deep in his mind, a part of his consciousness long forgotten and now remembered, he hopes for this. Maybe what he thinks has happened has not come to pass.

"Hello?" The whisper is obscurely loud for such a quiet noise. The boy cringes at his stupidity before remembering that there is no one to hear him. Everyone else is gone.

So he screams.

When his lungs begin screaming for air, begging for him to stop, pushing his oxygen-starved blood through his pulsating veins, he revels in the feeling of death for a moment before falling back onto the hard ground. He breathes in, remembering the high that comes with lack of oxygen. He has tried this before. He misses the feeling. One pale finger trails in the dirt off to his side, picking up pieces of ash from the rubble. He feels a wetness, too, a warm sensation that tingles through his arm. And then he smells it.

Blood.

His own.

He smiles without happiness and closes his sightless eyes. He never imagined the end of the world would be so painless, and he wonders why he does not feel sad.

Or is this sadness?

**Nudge**

She is speechless. She is never speechless. Thoughts refuse to run through her brain. She only hears the rush of air filling her lungs and leaving her body. In. Out. In. Out.

In.

Out.

The oxygen refuses to gain speed, despite the panic the girl feels starting in the deep recesses of her mind. All she can see is cloud cover. Coarse ash falls from her hair as a tremor forces her spine to extend and contract, and her fists clench at her sides. She feels as if she should be angry. She feels as if she should be sad.

She feels only emptiness.

What has she done wrong? Where is everyone? What has happened? Questions swirl around in her brain, but she knows the answer to everything. She has existed. She has breathed the wrong air. Everyone is gone. And as she swallows thickly, looking down at her scuffed shoes past her long mocha legs, she nods in recognition.

She has failed.

**Gazzy**

There lies a building in the middle of the rubble. Not a building, really. A shelter. A construction. Four pieces of wood straining together to hold up a sheet of warped, twisted metal with deadly nails reaching for the sky. Under this shelter sits a child, huddled into a ball, trying not to let his tears show.

He cries for nothing and for everything.

He cries for the loss of his world.

He cries for the loss of humanity.

He cries for the loss of his sister.

He bleeds. And as he bleeds, he cries for losing his own blood in a battle not won, a battle destined to be lost since the beginning of time. He has failed the world and he has failed himself. He has failed his sister and his family.

"I'm sorry," he sniffs, the wind whipping his world away from him and crashing them around his make-shift lean-to. He has learned that one must always be prepared, even in the event of crisis. Even in the event of sheer, utter apocalypse. He remembers a question he was once asked as a joke.

_Would you rather be in a coma for five years and wake up to find the apocalypse had gone, _the question has asked, _or would you rather experience the apocalypse and be fried in the explosion?_

Well, he knew his answer now. He would rather kill himself, for there is no death in apocalypse.

Only isolation.

**Angel**

Hurt. Cold. Pain. Ice. She wants to leave this place, yet she knows she can never. She knows that all is lost, yet no one has told her. She has only heard it in the minds of others. Through the minds of others. The girl falls onto her side and curls in on herself, wrapping her fragile arms around her thin legs. She is underfed. She is captured. She has failed.

_Save me_, she thinks, knowing nobody can hear her. Only she can hear herself. Only she holds the power. Only she could have stopped this. But she is a betrayer. She played with fire, thinking she could freeze it.

She should have known that not even the coldest temperatures in the universe could freeze a flame this powerful. And she feels regret along with her pain.

_There it goes._

_Its heart is slowing._

_Should we do something?_

_It was bound to happen. It's only a child._

_It'll be gone soon. Just leave it. Someone else will get it later._

_Get the others._

_There it goes._

And finally, the girl closes her eyes to the world, to the darkness. Having them open does her no good, and it saves her extra pain. She embraces this new numbness of unawareness.

She knows peace.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks for reading this chapter. Means a lot to me, guys. Special thanks as always to Veronica and Meg for encouraging me after I got this random idea in my head for a post-apocalyptic Maximum Ride. I also want to thank EMILY for pretty much being my biggest supporter lately. You rock, bestie. The lyrics at the beginning of the chapter refer to the song <em>My Apocalypse by Escape the Fate. Will update ASAP. Thanks again! 3<em>_


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